The Conqueror (1956)

Excellent but underrated film

Captivating movie !

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Susan Hayward is my favorite classic actress. I've seen every movie of hers I could get my hands on, and no matter how terrible it was or how small her part was, I've watched every film through to its entirety. The Conqueror is the exception. It's the only Susan Hayward movie I've ever turned off.John Wayne plays Genghis Khan. Take a minute to wrap your head around that ludicrous casting decision. He kidnaps Susan Hayward because he thinks she's beautiful, and because he's The Conqueror so he thinks he can conquer her, too. She hates him at first, but after she realizes she's no match for his macho strength and prowess, she falls in love with him. Not only is this movie so horrifically cheesy, cheap, badly acted, poorly written, and absurd, but there's a very sad backstory attached to this film. It was shot on location in Utah, near where nuclear weapons were tested three years prior. The government assured everyone there was no danger of nuclear fallout, but the director, many of the leads, and about half the crew got cancer in the ensuing decades. Director Dick Powell died of cancer after seven years, Pedro Armendariz got cancer in four years, John Wayne and Agnes Moorehead died of cancer in the 1970s, and Susan Hayward died of a brain tumor, tragically after starring in the remake of Dark Victory.

This has to be the worst major Hollywood production of all time. Incredibly miscast throughout with unspeakable dialogue, beyond boring plot, trite art direction, and ridiculous costuming. Even the desert settings are totally wrong. The entire look of the film appears to be that of a Mongolian western. It's so bad that it makes the tepid Yugoslavian-based remake of a decade later (at half the price) look like a good movie. There are simply no words adequate to convey the disaster filmed here. That $6 million dollars could be assigned to this script is simply beyond belief. It's pure torture to sit through, unless perhaps, you're totally drunk and looking for the ultimate comedy of filmic errors.

I caught this film entirely by accident as you do. i'm usually working so I tend to more listen than watch.At first I thought it was another John Wayne cowboy movie. It sounded John Wayne, it sounded sort of cowboy, but something was wrong.I started watching to see him in some kind of fake Mongol costume with other obviously fake mongol\Chinese actors (white Americans). This wasn't so bad except that John Wayne was totally unfit for the position.He does absolutely NOTHING at all to be or move or sound even a tiny bit like a vicious Mongol warrior. It's like watching a cowboy film without guns set in Mongolia. You just can't divorce Wayne from it and so the movie literally collapses the moment he opens his mouth. Seriously, it does. It's a facepalm moment.On top of that, the script is awful, something a small child would do for his first class story. Wayne delivers it like he's alseep, all the way through the movie.Like others have said, it's so bad you just have to laugh. People in the 1950s surely must have seen this as rubbish once out. Even they could not possibly have liked this.This probably helped future historical film makers know what NOT to do as well as make them laugh out loud. It's worth watching for that.2 stars for the unintentional humour.

It's a Howard Hughes production, which in itself makes this worth watching. Of even more interest, this stars John Wayne as Temudjin - Genghis Khan - as it shows that title character rising to power as Khan of the Mongols and ultimately a good part of the world. Wayne is a curious choice for the role. I've never found him to be the most versatile of actors. He plays cowboys extremely well and he plays soldiers reasonably well. As Khan, he gets to spend a lot of time on a horse and he leads a lot of Mongols into battle. Combining the two types of characters he plays so well, you'd think this movie was tailor made for him. The problem is that he neither looks nor sounds like a typical Mongol! Frankly, Wayne's presence here is unfortunately somewhat distracting. The story here isn't all that bad, and for the type of historic epic that was often made in this era, it's fairly close to the historical facts in many ways, but there's also a lot that distracts from the history. The romance, for example, between Temudjin and Bortai (Susan Hayward.) The romance was too forced and simply seemed unnatural for the context. There's also an extended scene in a rival Khan's court which features a series of dancing girls who seem to have come out of a Las Vegas show. That also took away from the credibility of the movie. The sets were all right but unspectacular and the dialogue came across at times as somewhat stilted (I'm not even really sure that that means but the word seems to fit!)Let's be honest. This is not by any definition a great movie - or even a particularly good one. It is, however, definitely a curiosity worth watching if you're a movie buff, primarily for the combination of Wayne and Hughes.